


Rin

by Recidiva



Series: Fracture Planes and Hot Chocolate [4]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 19:38:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12372633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recidiva/pseuds/Recidiva
Summary: It's been a while since I finished writing "Of Kittens and Broken Things" and "Broken Thing" but the characters are part of my daily life in many ways so I have ongoing conversations with Garrus, Cara and Thane in his iterations.  As a warning, this summary and the notes will have some spoilers for both of those stories, so if you haven't read them it'll result in "WHY DID YOU TELL ME THAT?" and if you haven't read them, trying to read this piece without context will result in "What the fuck is going ON here?"  This piece is a requested prompt from the persona of Rin from "Broken Thing," who feels cheated of what he wanted to originally accomplish.  Chapter 14 threw his plans into complete disarray and he never got the real chance to seduce his Lirya the way he wanted.  We've been arguing about this for a while.  He feels unfairly injured, to which I reply - That was the nature of the prompt.  I also made you a God.  Get over it.  He is not over it.  (Continued in notes)





	Rin

**Author's Note:**

> Since "Broken Thing" had veered suddenly at chapter 14 and made Rin's plans of seduction irrelevant because he couldn't execute them anymore, I reluctantly took Rin's idea of seducing Cara with the idea of Manipar and gave it to Thane in "Kittens" and Rin is resentful though "Kittens" Thane benefited greatly. YOU'RE THE SAME GUY. GET OVER IT. He is not over it. According to him I made him all evil again (you were evil all along, Rin...) and the Leviathan's reveal forced him straight back into overt cruel intimidation, which was not really what he wanted to do with his newly created self. "I MADE YOU A GOD. TWICE. GET OVER IT!" He is not over it. So here you go. It's likely best to have read all of "Kittens" and all of "Broken Thing" before venturing here, and this should fit in "Broken Thing" after Chapter 12 - mostly. This is really a phase shift where he gets some retroactive fantasy that seems somewhat inconsistent with the rest of the story because according to him the meanie author made him more meanie unnecessarily. YOU'RE EVIL RIN. But I love him and it turned out well and we both got to have Cara say new things so that's a good enough reason for both of us. I tried to tell him that he could have had this interlude AFTER he screwed everyone over completely - again - and he could have made her have a fantasy that matched this exactly. He replied that it would not have invoked the same meaning to him personally and he wanted this moment. Eventually I gave in, wrote it with some exasperation and did some crying, and I think he is in fact right. (Not good, but right. You're still an evil fuck.) FINE. You're right. I'm glad I wrote it. He still wants me to write some more and I HAVE THINGS TO DO RIN. There are some drawbacks to having created an obsessive and charming character who really wants me to write about him and Cara every day. Look, there's nothing wrong with you guys but I HAVE OTHER STUFF TO WRITE. No. No, according to him apparently I do not. 
> 
> So because I love to not-hate the guy and he is very persistent and has ensured I cannot sleep, here's some phase-shifted alternate split from another alternate universe involving the continuing year-long bickering of said meanie author and deluded bad guy... 
> 
> p.s. I love Cara so much. 
> 
> [Rin narrated on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpXKE-2kNGA&list=PL6m0YJleOvqqrlyavOw_hqNp2AKDWO3FI&index=14)

He entered her cabin bearing an evening meal to share as had become their habit. She was staring at the empty fish tank.

She did not look at him, her eyes seeing what had been there and what was not there as she said “It’s huge, this fish tank, can hold so much. I found a few… before… this was going to be the best fish tank, the happiest fish…”

He imagined her naming them and talking to them. He wanted to know their names in the way that he wanted to know everything about her.

“I don’t know what happened to them. I put them there and then I wasn’t able to care for them, and I don’t know… did they die? Are they alive somewhere in some other fish tank? Did Garrus…”

She fell silent and taut with the unexpressed, considering all the empty spaces in her life that had once held the promise of a future. He imagined the possible and probable ends of her thoughts. Had Garrus taken them and was unable to let them go because they reminded him of her? Had he thought of giving them back but could not bear to because it would mean the end of one of the last connections to her remaining in his life? Were they in a tank somewhere in the Councilor’s Citadel Tower office or his apartment? Had they died and he had been unwilling to replace them with counterfeits, knowing she would not know their names and that circumstance for her would be more jarring than an empty tank, for her to know it was an insulting comforting lie to assure her that nothing had changed in her absence? A desperate lie in his case he restrained himself from inflicting upon her.

He set down the trays of food silently and stepped behind her, gazing at the empty space that held her unkept promises. “Lirya, what do you wish? I will bring you new fish, or I will hear you speak of your past fish, or I will break the tank for you.” He imagined the most obvious use for the expanse of glass. “It can be turned to a mirror so you may gaze at your own grace when in doubt.”

“I’m not so much with the grace.”

“You are mistaken. I need no mirror to see you. Perhaps you do.”

“You’re very kind.”

He could try to be that for her. “I am only honest, Lirya.” Honest about her grace at least as he watched her in the glass. He did not wish to speak of Garrus, did not wish for her to confess her ever-present and obvious love, because she would if she could. She was watching the horizon of her prior life recede. Her nature would not allow her to be less than honest under most circumstances, but here she wished to protect Garrus and his Councilorship, would not be able to confess, must keep her secrets. They had anticipated this and he had given his Cara mutually-crafted permissions and protections, assured her that Rin would not force her to divulge or forsake her relationship to Vakarian, that Rin would not need to be told, that it would not be prone to being overheard by EDI or any other monitoring device. He had spared her guilt perhaps, but not her ever-present and now free grief as she contemplated emptiness. She had provided to protect Garrus, but not herself.

On Beckenstein she had been polished and charming. Here she was those things but also in turns permitting Rin to see her express that she was also tentative, manic and in pain. On Beckenstein he had wished to use her as a pet and she had known that each weakness would be categorized and exploited. None of his threats to harm Garrus or staff or their families had ever come to pass as the threats themselves had been beyond effective to control her behavior. He had not in fact wished to rape someone before her horrified eyes. He had not wished to be the man to kill staff or their children in her presence. That on its own had been a new experience. She had made him unwilling to be witnessed by her as the self he had known himself to be. She had spared him in that way and he was in fact grateful that her care and caution resulted in his rules being law. He had been vile and cruel, but ultimately he had not wished to touch another, think of another, had not wished for her to witness him touching another or granting them importance. She had given in completely and he had been willing to permit her ownership of the staff to reward her good behavior. They had no longer been his, but hers, like the clothing in her closet, valued only because they were hers. He would have incinerated them as easily as he incinerated her worn clothing, except that she did not wish for it to be so and he preferred her smiles. He did not rise to the level of caring about them himself, but he did care that she cared, did wish to reward her sacrifices and grace. That intimate crucible had built in heat and pressure, with him unwilling to miss a moment of that experience. Knowing what she had endured, what she was willing to endure, how she felt more deeply about her perceived abandonment of fish than he felt about anything other than her, he was a fascinated supplicant in her presence. His more vicious impulses that had always been provoked by others had never been provoked by her after he had made Cara’s full acquaintance. She had not allowed it. He had made vile threats knowing she would never allow them to take place. He would release slaves in her name, he would fight Reapers for her, he was assured that her best advice would result in the best result.

For him.

Before her presence in his life he had shed labels of good or bad as applied to him, as he had shed the label of Chosen. There had been no one, God or mortal, worthy to Judge him other than himself. Her judgment had created the only standard he honored, something she had earned with her intellect combined with her shifting kind and vicious steel-clad whimsy. She deemed him cheap and vile and he did not disagree. Yet she had deemed him an extraordinary man and he also did not disagree. He had been his own judge and he had known he was vile. He had been at peace with it, was in fact still at peace with it. If the Gods did not allow love and did not conspire that they belonged to each other, he had no use for Gods at all. He would recreate his path and his past. He would be responsible for lying about everything about himself other than his passion and need for her.

She was his reward for his diligence upon his Paths of death and desire. He knew he could never have achieved the intimate crucible of her vulnerable company otherwise. There would have been no other way to possess her than his cheap, vile and devastatingly effective methods, and he was grateful for them. He had taken her because he had been capable of taking her and no God had stopped him, nor had she. Perhaps others could have taken her as he had. He doubted any other could have kept her as he had, as he planned to continue to keep her.  
Whatever reaction took place between them was of value on its own, volatile chemistry that felt like each particle of composition, body, mind and soul was touched and transformed. Nothing was as important as that reaction, that chemistry, what was possible when she was near him. It was not love, he knew, but it was transcendent and rare, involuntary and addictive. She could not stop it from happening to her any more than he could stop it from happening to him. He reacted to every woman she was, equally incited and excited whether she granted him her passion, contempt, cold grace or heated surrender. He stood here with her now contemplating irrelevant and lost empty space because he would fill her life and he had chosen a version of her that was willing if not eager to interact with him, because he could not bear the idea of distance from her.

He had not become less judgmental, in fact more so in her presence. She exceeded his categories of grace and good became again a thing that was relevant to his life. As he watched her exclusively she excelled and others fell behind and became unworthy of his notice entirely.

He could not label his culling of the criminal community of Beckenstein good because he had done it to exercise his will to kill and to take. They had all deserved death and to have their possessions taken. He had told her that he did not value the concept of ‘fairness’ but that had been a lie he had told not truly knowing it was a lie at the time. He did in fact wish to treat her fairly if at all possible, ideally, and if that were impossible he would lavish her with what he knew she valued. A person who did not value ‘fair’ could not honor a contract, and he always honored his contracts. Until her. There was some objective truth to fairness that if he had been asked whether or not he wished to murder a six-year-old Drell child or a 300-year-old Asari slave trader, he knew his choice. Perhaps he did not respond to ‘fair’ so much as innocence and guilt. He knew himself to be guilty. He knew the Asari slave trader to be guilty, and he did not wish to visit his presence upon the innocent. Unless that innocence was named Drala’fa. Where he had not told a lie was the fact that if he were unable to treat her fairly, he would still not hesitate in keeping her. The criminals at Beckenstein had been obvious and bright targets of opportunity, their glaring depravity with attendant weakness drawing him to call down judgment upon them. He had taken her in the same way. She had been an obvious and bright target of opportunity, and he could not label keeping her alive as a good action he had taken. Restoring her to her life here with him inserted inextricably was also not a good action, or he had not taken that action because it was good. He had taken that action because these circumstances would give him ample opportunity to place himself in her Path and defy whatever Gods guided her, test his will against hers, kill Reapers and take her. Her being alive was objectively and subjectively good and that was a truth. Good for him, good for the galaxy, good for Vakarian. He did not know if it was good for her. He did know he wished to make it so. Each book she had appreciated, each smile he had observed, each fruit plate delivered and enjoyed, each of her sighs and moments of laughter, humor and passion; those were good.

That was perhaps his only standard of good. She even bore the stamp of innocence, as a person that had seen and experienced great evil yet was not corrupted by it. She would oppose it and she would win or die in the attempt.

He had stolen her, he had taken her Destiny, and he could not return her to herself because he would lose her, and that was bad. Impossible.

Even her expressed turmoil now was good. Her moments of pain, of vulnerability, of being alive and seeing the galaxy as she saw it, seeing fish in empty spaces and wondering about their smaller destinies and how she had failed to make them the ones she had envisioned… beholding her was good.

She did in fact calm and reverse his otherwise constant flow of contempt and create the chemistry of experience and contemplation that were his most cherished obsessions. That was in fact good. Good for Beckenstein staff, good for him, good for Vakarian, good for the galaxy at large that might catch his judgment were he not occupied with beholding her.

His Whole woman knew that as well, that holding his attention gave her the power to stem the destruction he would otherwise sow were it not for Her.

She created new and erratic balance in him. He fancied himself as a coin spinning through light and dark iterations, dazzling and inspired by her and wishing for her smiles and sighs where before there had been silence and death, thin cold metal unmoving in the dark whose only value came from the honed edge. He had even welcomed his own death, but had been too competent at avoiding it. There were colors to the sides of his posited coin, dark and light, but she provided for the flash and spin, the dizzying and joyous, terrifying Path he took, lies and truths intertwined. He could label the sides of himself as much as he wished, but he did not care which side faced her, his dark reveling in satisfaction of schemes, his light reveling in the good of her continued living, even in the fact that her innocence inspired him to preserve and not corrupt. He had harmed her but not corrupted her. He would continue to harm her in order to maintain the right to spin in her gravity well. 

Now he would only accept death at her hand, a final volatile experience that would allow him to have experienced all things at her hands, as it should be.

Her eyes were racing from the posited trails of fish to the fading trajectories of her prior life, measuring her own harm, her own inevitability. His Whole woman knew she would belong to Rin and that she was the owner of the dervish he was. Wishing to expose only his light to her would be fanciful and false. If she took a step away from him, he would not allow that and he knew exactly how useful his dark was in keeping her at his side. He would not hesitate. Right now he would not force her to contemplate longer on her own, would not coyly force her to chase. She was luffing like a sail in changing wind, facing her past, both knowing her future was inevitable. It would be composed of Reapers and Rin, and the less time she spent suffering solitary angst, good or bad or not, the better. He did not wish to see her in prolonged pain. If she was going to be in prolonged pain it would not be due to her attention on fish or Vakarian, it would be devoted to Senar as Senar was devoted to her.

He did not wish to ask her questions whose answers were already known between them. His Cara was wise enough to know that Rin had seen Councilor Vakarian and Lal Shepard together and that Rin was no fool. There was no hook there to hang upon, he had made certain of it in all her priming. She would know that Rin would know, she would not need to tell him. Rin was empathetic, kind and understanding and would never be a man who would demand to know her past, only a man who treasured any present or future she was able to provide.

His eyes met hers in the glass of the fish tank as he asked her “Does your beauty disturb you?”

She smiled in answer “I think I’m ambivalent to my own beauty. I think it’s your beauty that disturbs me.”

He smiled back at her and tilted his head, considering her statement “My beauty has disturbed many, including me. To be born Drell, to have all eyes turn as I walk by, to know exactly why and how I am prized, has been disturbing. And yet… I find in your case I am grateful to have any allure.”

“I think it’s more about the fact that I am only standing here because of you.”

“Then I am grateful for that as well. I am grateful that beauty for me resides in your eyes and your deeds. Can you accept that it could be so? That when I see you in the mirror, that when you see yourself, it is your eyes that hold your charm? Whether they are green or violet does not matter.”

“Can you accept that although you’re… very pretty… I mean, really pretty. I have to admit that… when I see you I see…”

“What do you see?” She would never tell him that he glowed. Cara’s lack of understanding of her synesthesia made her unwilling to present it to others as she presented it to herself. In her opinion Rin did not need to know of it and he had complied. There was power in already knowing and he treasured her reasons for hiding things as much as he treasured her reasons for revealing things. He saw her speed of intellect in her half-drawn breath taken with the nearly wild romantic urge to tell him and then sliding down the other side of that breath in a new direction.

“I’ve never been rescued before.”

“I have, Lirya. I know it’s power. I know your power.”

“And I see that too. I can’t really describe it, and maybe I have to rely on you to know. I’ve been armored, I’ve died, I’ve been in pain…” She would not discuss Mindoir, but she was seeing her parents now, the way her face moved over the subject and beyond. She skirted it but reached the essence of what she felt “I was rescued on Mindoir, but I didn’t really suffer there, other people did. But Beckenstein… I have never before been so helpless. My mind taken from me, my will taken from me, my memories, my… everything of value, taken. And you… had every reason to walk in and out of that room and never look back, to do the best a Drell could do to forget… and you didn’t.” He saw ripples and depths in her eyes, the whisper of his Whole woman like bubbles rising up from the ocean floor “Why… did you do… what you did?”

“I am not a hero, Lirya. I am a man who had nothing to live for until he beheld your eyes. You rescued me, and yet I did not live beyond that point. I did not suffer as I had, but I did not live. I cannot say that I was a good man before I was taken as a slave. I cannot say I was a good man when I was a slave. I can say that being a slave caused pain and rebellion against pain. Yet I still lived in pain even in my rebellion. The pain will always be with me, but I could not bear for that same pain to take you. You had purpose, you had meaning I lacked. If I could restore you to that purpose… perhaps I could be responsible for some of the good you create.”

A knowing and unbelieving smile graced her lips “So you did it for selfish reasons?”

“As I told you, Lirya, I was and am a broken man, but I could not bear to see your beauty caged and denied. It was worth my life to restore you to your purpose.”

She held out strands of her hair and contemplated it “Surgical sleight of hand. False beauty.”

“You mistake me and yourself if you believe the beauty I meant had to do with your hair.”

She laughed “I’d say the violet ribbons helped, but you also did not take the opportunity to stare.”

“If that minor ability to be even remotely decent impresses you, I am grateful.”

She shook her head and dropped her hair, turning to face him, her fingers tracing along his face “You had glass embedded… here. Deep. There’s no scar.”

“Drell do not form scars as humans do.”

“Where else haven’t you formed scars, Rin?”

A montage of wounds, lacerations, damage that would form scars in other races throughout his lifetime was called forth by her asking. “Technically I have not formed scars everywhere. There are two places where they were given no opportunity.”

She gasped and said “No kidding, really? Is it indelicate to ask where? Don’t answer that, I know the answer. Just… tell me where. Now I really want to know.”

He gazed down at her and said deadpan “I truly wish I had not been injured so often on the lips, that would be an excellent answer, but it is not true.”

She pressed her lips together, a slow smile forming on her adored lips “I think I’ve exhausted my flirting capacity and now I’m curious and I shouldn’t be.”

“You need not flirt, Lirya, and you need only ask. In the first instance, beautiful woman, I am at your service and so inappropriately enamored that I’m grateful simply to hear you say you are willing to flirt at all. In the second instance, I had no chance to scar at the back of my right thigh, a vanishingly small patch of irregular skin that I will not point out because I doubt you need that much of a description, and below my left ear.”

“You mean behind your earlobe?”

“I do not have an earlobe.”

“You caught me being human. Or pointing out a human sensitive spot the way you pointed out lips. So we’ve missed the chance at lip and neck injuries that might be kissed.”

“Though there remain lips and necks still functioning.”

“For which I am grateful.”

He did not wish to touch her until she asked or allowed him to, an odd magnetic repulsion that added to the tension he felt as she looked up at him with her spark of teasing as she danced around unfathomed pain. He resisted the urge to tuck her hair behind her ear as he had done so often or tip her chin up as his finger wished to. “My Lirya, I am gratified by discussions of lips and necks and flirting. Beyond, in fact, and I must say something presumptuous. My feelings for you are not shallow things. My heart has formed scars and may in fact be entirely composed of such, but it is yours if you wish it to be so. What I must ask is that if you wish to touch me, you understand that gaining your regard is a gift I did not expect, but I welcome. If you feel that your regard would be fleeting, I ask that you pass me by. My heart cannot bear another scar, and one caused by your absence would be one I do not wish to survive.”

Her brows drew together, and he realized he did not need to tuck her hair or lift her chin, her hair was fallen back because she was nearly on tip toes looking up at him as his head bent down as he stood in the posture of true-not-true humility of supplication. She said “So you’d throw your life away to save mine without asking anything in return, I can’t even be a damsel in distress here because you’re going to hog all the distress?”

She was so beautiful in her teasing warmth and he nearly fell to her gravity, only his demand and requirement of fidelity keeping him from her. She created a perfect moment, dark or light, spinning or still. “You grant me my worth, Lirya. It will always be so. On the subject of you, yes, I am distressed. Be consoled. You still have all the power inherent to damsel.”

“I should probably disclose here, I was a sex slave and all. In case you haven’t heard.”

“I had. I was also a sex slave. And all.”

“And all…”

“Lirya, I will care for your past or not care as you bid me. I wish to know that you are healed from trauma. I am not. I cannot make it so for you. I cannot make it so for me. But I feel I could be healed through you.”

“I don’t know that I’m healed. I don’t know if I can. I know I trust you. I know I want you. I know I don’t want to go another day without telling you that. I can’t seem to… thank you enough or to not want you enough.”

“Then that is good. I need no more thanks and I am content with you wanting me. Claim me, my Lirya. I can only rise to be yours if you choose that it is so. Please.” Blue raced along his nerves, pouring through his skin, sparking on his tongue and flavoring his words. He leaned down to whisper to her with the only light he could produce, the light that belonged to her, needing to make it belong to them. “Tell me…” His lips were close enough to the skin of her throat for arcing blue to warm her along with his breath, her throat bared and bent, her outrush of breath making a sound from her he knew so well. It was her blend of surrender and encompassing, his Shepard, his Drala’fa, his Cara, his Lirya. All things in her unspoken voice that he heard because he knew her, knew his lips could caress her skin and she would not stop him, that she would sway and fall. He almost allowed it, for her to pass without choice, without her words making it so, but he needed her words. There was no venom on her skin, only his voice, the warmth of his lips, his biotics, all they’d done together to reach this moment, his Whole woman knowing somewhere that he had abandoned all his lives, all his names for her and only for her, that his life and death belonged to her. That Rin was what he wished for her, what he wished for them if not for himself. To be permitted to live, to be rescued, to struggle and to serve Rightness. To be the Chosen of the only Goddess he found worthy of worship.

“Rin… please.” Power and helplessness blended in her voice, as though her hand spanned his throat and waist as his had spanned hers so many times, suspense and certainty. 

His breath was choked, his voice hoarse “You must ask, Lirya. You must tell me that I belong to you.”

“You belong to yourself.” Her words were weak shadows of truth, what she might want but what would never be real. He would not allow those words to be real.

“You are wrong, beautiful woman. You may not wish for it to be so, you may wish for me to be free to choose, but I am only free to know that you choose. Before I touch you, my Lirya, you must know that practiced pleasure was taught to and taken from me as a slave. I have not touched another since I saw you first. I have not, will not, touch another woman, for she would not bear the echo of green eyes filled with hope and pain. I abandoned all taken and trained pleasures, but I want them all now, to make them mine, make them yours, make them ours. I do not wish to allow my skin to touch yours without you knowing that each thought, each touch, each moment of pain endured to learn how to serve, they now have meaning and worth if it meant that when I saw you, I knew my life, my purpose, my service, belonged to you. You challenged me to no longer hide in the dark, to be free to stay. You ordered me to stay. I will obey. Say it, my Lirya. Give me the right to your bed, to your body, to serve you, protect you and learn new prayers and affirmations, words and actions of meaning because we say them and do them together.”

“What do you want me to say?” Her hands were gripped into tight fists. He feared her nails would dig into her palms and he did not wish to allow harm to come to her from what twined in the dark. That thought blended with the inrush of desire and jealousy of wanting her nails to only mark his skin, for them both to be released from what truths he was telling that would twist and mock if he allowed her thoughts to bend that way. His light and truth would turn her swirling gravity in the dark into his Aurora. He should not draw her attention to certain words, certain phrases, certain names, but at the moment he did not care if it tore the veil from her entirely, for her to feel and for him to see widening violet revelation in her full horror and his utter lack of practicality.

For the chance that she would choose him as he chose her. 

For her to love him, Whole.

For Fate and the Gods to grant her, grant him, true-and-true peace and passion shared as they waged war with all else.

He could learn to love her if granted her example and grace.

With those fervent wishes he whispered “It is the will of the sand, my Lirya. Tell me these words, say them with truth, with what you know, and never take them from me. Tell me… ‘he… is… mine…’ and then I will show you how true those words are and always will be.”

Her body straightened and his arms tensed, ready to close around her, for his fingers to slip into her mouth and venom to take hold as he whispered to her, her storm caged and fed by blue crackling will. He hung suspended as she squared her small shoulders, drew in the breath of potential ruin and promise as she said with what he knew was blurred memory and Drala’fa’s devotion, Cara’s giving, Shepard’s command and his Lirya’s wish to grant him grace and place for rescuing her “He… is… mine.” 

With those words the pull to her was polarized as his hands moved down her forearms, caressing her skin as he opened her clenching fists to twine his fingers with hers. His breath was short in the presence of covenant and care as he drew her against his body. The storm of blue and will, veiled and bared truths crackled in the air. He pressed a reverent kiss to the skin of her throat and told her in prayer and promise “Kar iva’las, Lirya.” - May you speak the words of truth, woman who is above and beyond me.

The moment was rich with her scent, the feel of her, layered and dovetailing destiny, the fire on his skin and the fact that she was not blushing but standing straight and strong as he trembled and felt each thread of destiny pull and knot. Each Path crossed in this moment with him humbled and exalted and wishing nothing but to envelop her, treasure her and honor that her will brought them here and she was where she belonged, and now he was where he belonged. He alternately faded and flared, proud and humbled, relishing the irony of circumstance and truth of need. He had been told as a child that he was destined and Chosen and now he felt how weak that hold had been on him compared to what it meant to behold and be held in her twin suns.

She was his Path and regardless of what she had once wanted, now she would want him, now they would take each step together, her Destiny irrevocably twined with his. Theirs. His feet would remain in shifting sand, his eyes would be drawn irresistibly to the sky where her otherwise unseen dark twists were illuminated by the flare of his biotics. His Aurora was his Fate and Path, his only Signpost and Shores, his Rightness.

He no longer cared about his names or her names, needed no voice as she leaned into his embrace.

He could feel the tension of her, all their work, all his work that led to this moment where her previous lives, her previous selves, his previous lives and his previous selves had been mutually abandoned to create what was the blending if not sharing of their wills.

She whispered with all the conviction she was capable of generating “She is yours.”

His Lirya would never take without giving, even if he demanded that it be so.

His gentleness and care for his Drala’fa were rooted in the moments that had begun with empowered taunting and then turned to trying to ease the sting and cost, to comfort his willful and terrified Shepard-Turned-Cara. He had been fascinated as the sensations of absolute power over her and wanting to serve her twined into something irreplaceable, a feeling he reached for and grasped over and over in the measured minutes his venom allowed her to experience her Whole conflict. Whatever his Drala’fa gave him was weighted against those minutes as her will was taken and her terror faded through his kisses and whispers. Some of the things he had said to her as he had drawn her Whole into his arms bore his deeper truths as he watched her helpless descent and ascent, as venom took hold.

He had told her so, knowing she would forget but he would not.

‘Cara, I will watch over you. Whatever my venom takes from you I will bear as burden of truth. You are adored, you are wanted, you are needed. I cannot make who I am different, but I can make a difference. Reapers will fall and you will be adored.’

So often her tension and tears had melted to her unguarded and abandoned moans as he carried forward what he knew he had taken from her, given as much back as was possible of his body and his heart and his mind. He knew he was unworthy of her offerings to him, but he needed them. He wished to honor her as she sacrificed herself willingly at his demanded altar.

‘Cara, if I had a wish, it would be to be worthy of you, know this to be a truth. I was not and I am not a man who invests in wishes, but before you, I did not have them at all. You told me not to grow a conscience, that I would choke, and I know you are right. I know you are right, Cara, but if I were a man of right, I still would not have you. I will do all I can to serve, if not love, then to serve your happiness with what we will cause to be.’

Now she did not remember those moments, but she did feel and fear them in their dark and bright echoes, he knew it, as the urge to surrender all she had and take all he had to give called them forth.

He would not stop. He would never stop. He would never give her up.

She knew in her blue-infused bones that he would take all she had to give and give all he had back. His mind and heart might be flawed, but his body would serve hers as he knew he could, that forged strength and will at her call. He had begun their time together reveling in what he had taken from her, moved to reveling in what he could give her and now he fervently wished to see what they could create together, with her will free to pursue her Destiny.

He said to her now “Lirya, I thank you for your gift. For all your gifts, as you have said and as I feel, I cannot seem to thank you enough.” ‘I cannot seem to thank you enough’ spun in light and dark, mocking and true meaning and gravity with him marveling at how exquisitely words were shaped in her presence. She had told him she would content herself with digging herself out, and he would content himself with digging himself deeper, and in this moment he felt only that digging in any direction had ceased as they met each other where up became down and down became up. She must know some satisfaction of her plan unfolding, somewhere inside her, and he honored and owned that woman as well as all his other women she embodied. He had the given rights to her body but for the moment all he desired was their hands entwined as they were, her weight trusting to him to keep her upright.

He’d had his moments of searing clarity, of death, of desire, of freedom, and as she loosened her hands in his and wrapped her arms tightly around him, as his arms enfolded her, he wished for only the searing clarity not of death or desire or freedom, but of Rin’s ambitions made whole. To stand for her, stand by her, stand with her and serve.

He was sanctified by her touch.

He hoped for that to be the will of the sand, to transform, to be given the chance to be her Rin, promising himself that he would never wake her, would never tell her, would never allow her to suffer for his choices, that his Whole woman would rest, knowing she was adored and that his promises that might have once been empowered mockery were in fact sacred to him. That he worshipped Her and his devotion was all he had to give, that Goddesses cannot always choose the worshippers that were drawn to their light, but none would need her light and gravity more than he had, did and would. The petty allure of his overt power over her faded and dimmed, all the urges to press her to her knees before a crowd were cut from him in a bloodless, numbed slice and fell away, to disintegrate to smoke, sacrificed to their future together.

He did know his Aurora in the storm. Promises of skin and sex faded before the urge to comfort his Whole woman, apologize for what he had done, to be forgiven and redeemed. If she remembered she would know there had been no mockery. For him to strive to make the illusion so powerful and devoted that she would never see through it, would never need to see through it, would never want to see through it. To create sacred space for her.

Perhaps for them.

Weakness or strength gripped him and he felt he should leave the ship, release her, turn and walk away wordless, do no more harm, perhaps end his own life after contacting her and setting her free…

He imagined that path and yearned to be the man that could or would do that for her in a leaping aspirational moment, but the answering and overwhelmingly dark surge of ‘NO’ in response to even the thought, much less a taken step toward that potential Path leaked through his biotics and caused a surging flare into her skin, to her bones from his. His arms tightened around her. He still and always would bear the uncontrollable urge to possess her. At that surge of affirmation his Lirya held him tighter to her.

His balance was reaffirmed and fated. Never, Drala’fa. I will never let you go. Forgive me or do not forgive me, but I will never let you go.

Thane Krios fell away, the ephemeral and illusory potential path of Senar Tuelon without sin fell away and he was Rin, flashing with the spin and turns of gravity, crackling with will, bound and committed to serving his Lirya while serving himself. Rightness had no power on the Path they walked together if it led her away from him. 

He would dig deeper if he must.

He knew her, could ask anything of her and receive it, could press venom to her skin and her mouth and draw moans from her as he created her desires and then fulfilled them, but whoever ‘he’ was that knew her, Rin must be a different man for her. His desires and digging would remain nameless and he would not touch her with them. He sought peace for her. She was trembling and he imagined she was watching all the solid things that had once ruled her life; her parents, her love for Vakarian, even her command shimmer like the faded mirages they were and collapse. The sight of them was blocked by whoever he was. He demanded that if she walked, she walk with him and no other, or her Path would end and he would deny her a chance at her Destiny, retreat to the proposed cave with coveralls and canned food if he must, and they would play out his demanded destiny because he could do nothing else. 

He tried to think of what to do for her, but his body answered with what he wished to do in this moment. He lifted her into his arms, her head cradled against his shoulder, his hand sliding through the strands of her hair, his Rightful place. Not the bed. He did not wish to force her to sex and frenzy. He wished to grant her peace. Even if cheap and vile illusory peace was all he had to offer her in the end along with all the denial of her desired past, future and freedom.

He carried her to the couch, allowing the illusory peace of his choice to invest his voice. “Sleep, Lirya. I promise you I will be here when you wake. All the words that crowd your mind can be spoken later, and I will listen with hungry ears then. Neither your burdened silences nor your words will be forgotten.”

Unlike all my words, which I forced you to forget, my Drala’fa.

I remember.

His brows drew together, his eyes tight and burning, lips quivering as he kissed the hair he had forced to midnight, as he held the woman he had exalted to her degradation.

He could never lift her higher than she could ascend on her own.

But she would never be on her own so he must lift her.

She cried until choking sobs tore at them, with her falling to sleep in his arms as he whispered fervent prayers she could not hear to the sands and the surging dark.

‘Take me as you have taken me, but spare her knowing. Grant her joy. Let me carry our burdens and let her illusion of love and freedom be greater things that the reality of those who know love and freedom. Please, make it so.’


End file.
